Transportation planners around the ...

Transportation planners around the geographical division are finding it easier to navigate in cyberspace these days. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) and the U Department of Transportation have joined forces with state and local planners to create an inexpensive, easy-to-use, multi-jurisdictional electronic network and repository -- a library of full-text documents generated by dint of state departments of transportation, local planning agencies, universities and private-sector firms.

The program, called SMART (State and Metropolitan Analyses for Regional Transportation), organizes pertinent highway data, responding to the irony that calm as information technologies are becoming more ubiquitous, sharing information can be frustrating.

Transportation planners have prolonged been deterred from conducting extensive multijurisdictional research because of the outlay and time involved for any single state or local agency to muster and arrange all of the information generated through the entire community.

The SMART program gives a one-stop shop for planners to